Palestine A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha

Another early Palestinian opponent of Zionism was Ruhi Bey al-Khalidi (1864–1913), a brilliant writer, liberal thinker, Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Sorbonne University, diplomat and talented politician at the turn of the 20th century (Kasmieh 1992; Khalidi, W. 1984: 74; Beška 2016c). Al-Khalidi also served as Consul-General of the Ottoman state in Bordeaux, France, from 1898 to 1908, while at the same time publishing articles in al-Hilal and al-Manar in Cairo under the pen name al-Maqdisi (the Jerusalemite) (Beška 2016c: 181). In 1900 al-Khalidi was a co-founder of the family (Islamic waqf)

library, al-Khalidiyyah Library, in the Old City of Jerusalem. It is one of the largest and most important Muslim family libraries in the world and a living landmark to Palestine and the Palestinian people. Ruhi al-Khalidi was a nephew of the mayor of Jerusalem, Yusuf Diya al-Din Pasha al-Khalidi, and in 1908 he was one of three delegates elected to represent Jerusalem in the new Ottoman government, later becoming the deputy to the head of the Ottoman parliament (in 1911). Al-Khalidi was a close friend of Khalil al-Sakakini, a Jerusalemite progressive pedagogue and one of the most influential Palestinian educationalists and literary thinkers of the modern era.

Al-Khalidi’s work was an example of the emergence of a distinct Palestinian territorial national identity among the educated urban elites in the country at the turn of the 20th century. Commenting on his Arab country of Palestine shortly before his untimely death in 1913, Ruhi al-Khalidi had this to say: ‘It is noteworthy that whenever the name of the country appears, it is always Palestine, never southern Syria or anything else’ (Ruhi al-Khaldi’s unpublished manuscript, ‘Zionism or the Zionist Question’, al-Khalidiyyah Library, Jerusalem, cited in Gerber 1998a).24

Today al-Khalidiyyah Library houses a large collection of Islamic historical and fiqh manuscripts, a local collection built by Palestinians, and a unique Arabic manuscript about the history of political Zionism written by Ruhi al-Khalidi in the late Ottoman period. Al-Khalidi’s undated manuscript, in his beautiful handwritten Arabic, was composed many months, perhaps several years, before his death in 1913. I had the chance of examining the text at the Khalidiyyah Library on 22 April 2017. The extraordinary manuscript looks like unfinished draft book which Ruhi al-Khalidi appeared to have been working on long before his death. Crucially, throughout the text repeatedly he uses the terms Filastin ( فلسطين ) and turab Filastin (‘soil of Palestine’, تراب فلسطين ) to describe Zionist ambitions and settler-colonisation in his own country of Palestine. The manuscript also contains a list of Zionist colonies in Palestine, with their Hebrew names and with the local Palestinian Arabic names they had either replaced or were named after. Interestingly, there is no mention in the manuscript of Suriyyah al-Janubiyyah (‘Southern Syria’) as an alternative way of describing Ottoman Palestine. Instead Ruhi al-Khalidi mentions ‘Roman Palestine’ and refers to Filastin under the Ottomans.

The manuscript was clearly intended for publication and overall it gives the impression that the Arabic term Filastin had been used by Ruhi al-Khalidi and his compatriot for decades.

Muslims coexisted with Christian Arabs and Arab Jews in Muslimmajority Palestine for centuries and Ruhi al-Khalidi was naturally sympathetic to the idea of Jewish religious attachment to Jerusalem. But he was highly critical of Zionism as a political project and saw Western Zionist colonisation schemes as a major threat to the indigenous people of Palestine.

In an interview with the Hebrew periodical ha-Tzvi on 1 November 1909, al-Khalidi, then a member of the Ottoman parliament, expressed concern that Zionist settler-colonisation ‘would inevitably lead to the expulsion of Arabs from the places they had inhabited for centuries’ (Beška 2016c: 183).

Like Ruhi al-Khalidi, former Mayor of Jerusalem Yusuf Diya al-Din al-Khalidi (1829‒1907) had strongly objected to the Zionist project in Palestine. Representing Jerusalem in the Ottoman parliament in the 1870s, al-Khalidi had earlier attended an English school in Malta where he studied English and French, and then continued to study Semitic languages in the Oriental Academy of Vienna. In a well-known letter to Zadok Kahn, the Chief Rabbi of France and an associate of Theodor Herzl, in early 1899, al-Khalidi suggested that the Zionists should find another place for the implementation of their political project:

In theory, Zionism is an absolutely natural and just idea on how to solve the Jewish question. Yet it is impossible to overlook the actual reality, which must be taken into account. Palestine is an integral part of the Ottoman Empire and today it is inhabited by non-Jews. This country is held in esteem by more than 390 million Christians and 300

million Muslims. By what right do the Jews want it for themselves?

Jewish money will not be able to buy Palestine. The only way to take it is by force using cannons and warships. Turks and Arabs in general sympathize with Jews. But some of them were affected by the fever of hatred for Jews, as it happened to the most advanced of the [European] civilized nations. Also the Christian Arabs, especially the Catholic and Orthodox, hate Jews very much. Even if Herzl obtained the approval of the Sultan Abdiilhamit II for the Zionist plan, he should not think that a day will come when Zionists will become masters of this country ...

It is therefore necessary, to ensure the safety of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire, that the Zionist Movement, in the geographic sense of the word, stops ... Good Lord, the world is vast enough, there are still uninhabited countries where one could settle millions of [European] poor Jews who may perhaps become happy there and one day constitute a nation. That would perhaps be the best, the most rational solution to the [European] Jewish question. But in the name of God, let Palestine be left in peace. (Quoted in Beška 2007: 28‒29)25

Around the same time, important developments in Arab opposition to Zionism centred on Zionist land purchasing activities in Palestine.

Against the background of Arab (Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese and Iraqi)

desire for autonomy, equal citizenship, decentralisation and political reforms (not complete independence or sovereignty) within the Ottoman state, the sale of land to, and settler-colonisation by, European Zionists in Palestine was seen as a real threat to the indigenous people. The international Zionist movement and Zionist settlers in Palestine (in sharp contrast to the then German Templar settlers) made it clear that their ultimate objective was the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

According to Charles Smith (1996: 34), in 1897 ‘an Arab commission was formed in Jerusalem, headed by the mufti, to examine the issue of land sales to Jews, and its protests led to the cessation of such sales for several years’. In reality, however, land sales in Palestine never ceased. Zionist land purchasing activities in the Esdraelon plain and eastern Galilee continued and centred on some of the most fertile land in the country.

These activities included the sale of lands of the Arab village of al-Fulah in the Nazareth sub-district to the Jewish National Fund in 1910. The lands of al-Fulah belonged to Elias Sursuq, a Greek Orthodox banker and absentee landlord from Beirut, who in 1910 reached a deal on their sale with the Zionists. According to Neville Mandel, this was ‘some of the best agricultural land in Palestine’ (cited in Bracy 2011: 45).

When the local Palestinian peasants refused to vacate their village and petitioned the Ottoman authorities, they were backed in their resistance by Shukri al-ʿAsali (1878–1916), the qaimmaqam (district governor) of Nazareth in Galilee and later a deputy in the Ottoman parliament, who became their key supporter in many of his articles in the Arabic press, including the newspaper Falastin. For al-ʿAsali, who wrote under a pseudonym, that of the legendary Salah al-Din who defeated the Latin Crusaders in the Battle of Hattin26 in eastern Galilee in 1187, the Galilee was integral to Palestine. Entitled ‘Letter of Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi to the Commander of the [Ottoman] Expedition to Hauran Sami Pasha al-Faruqi’, one of his 1910 articles pleaded with the Ottoman Governor of Hauran to stand up to Zionist plans in Palestine:

I beg you … to hurry and repel the Zionist threat from Palestine, whose soil is soaked with the blood of the Prophet’s companions and with the blood of my armies and for the retrieval of which I have sacrificed [the lives] of my brothers, my people and commanders.27

The al-Fulah affair ‘became the subject of an intensive newspaper campaign which had a powerful impact’ on local Arab public opinion (Beška 2016b: 4). Echoing the political discourses, terminology and resistance literature (Adab al-Muqawamah) of early Palestinian journalism, the geo-political term Filastin, popularised initially by the newspaper Falastin, continued to be wedded to the Palestinian national recovery and nationbuilding in the post-Nakba period. The terminological continuities were evident in the Palestinian journalistic publications which paved the way for the emergence of the resistance movement in the late 1950s and founding of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in the early 1960s. The first underground magazine of Fateh (Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini; ‘Palestinian National Liberation Movement’), which began to appear monthly in 1959 – under the editorship of Khalil al-Wazir (1935‒1988), a Palestinian refugee from al-Ramla, the old capital of Jund Filastin – was called Filastinuna, Nida al-Hayat (‘Our Palestine, the Call to Life’). Also, Filastin was the weekly supplement of the pro-Nasserist newspaper al-Muharrir (meaning the Liberator or the Editor), published in Beirut and edited by Ghassan Kanafani (1936‒1972), a Palestinian refugee from Acre, a journalist, novelist and later a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) (Rabbani 2005: 275).